just so stories the cat that walked by himself

The Woman laughed at him and told him to go back to the woods.

On the fourth night the Cat went to the cave and smelt the warm milk from the Cow. Each time the Cat followed and eavesdropped, called them fools, and went off to tell no one. They agreed to provide services to the couple, the Dog in exchange for roast meat and the other two for hay that she had dried by the fire. This attracted the Dog, and on the next two nights she similarly lured the Horse and the Cow to visit the cave. Then, while the Man slept, she took the bladebone of a shoulder of mutton and made a Singing Magic. The Man was wild too until he met the Woman, who chose a Cave for them to live in, lit a fire in it and hung a horsehide over the opening.

Originally all the tame animals were wild, but especially the Cat: he walked by himself and all places were alike to him. I’ll put the original story below (it’s short and really cool), and you can go here to read about its background and the reactions of critics and other authors. Do we keep cats, or do they keep us? The myths and the mysteries of felis catus explored by Patrick Bateson and John Bradshaw. In Just So Science, Vivienne Parry meets researchers whose work on some of Kipling’s ‘best beloved’ creatures is helping us to answer a rather inconvenient question: how do traits evolve? Why are some animals the way they are? Excerpts from five of the Just So Stories are read by Samuel West 5. But on closer inspection, might Kipling’s fantasies contain a grain of truth? And might the “truth” as science understands it, be even more fantastic than fiction? They’re ad hoc fallacies, designed to explain-away a biological or behavioural trait, more akin to folklore than the laws of science. But what does science make of these lyrical tales? For the most part, just-so stories are to be dismissed as the antithesis of scientific reasoning. In Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, we’re told how the leopard got his spots, the camel his hump, the whale his throat and so forth. Vivienne Parry presents the science behind some of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, with wondrous tales of how things really came to be. It’s a 15-minute program including a dramatic reading interspersed with intriguing facts about the biology of Felis catus.

The latest BBC segment, which you can hear here, deconstructs “The Cat that Walked by Himself”.

“Just So Science” on BBC Radio 4 has taken some of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and biologized them-interviewing experts on animal behavior to provide a gloss on Kipling’s descriptions.

Just so stories the cat that walked by himself